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Defense corporation Raytheon announced in a press release Tuesday that its Missile Systems business has teamed up withBritish defense company Chemring to develop a naval system for warships to defend against surface combatants.

The initiative currently plans to defeat fast attack craft with Raytheon missiles fired from a Chemring Centurion launcher, guided and tracked by shipboard sensors. Testing for the system is expected to begin in the middle of this year and will include at least two missile types to develop a multimission capability against maneuvering attackers.

Rick Nelson, vice president of Raytheon Missile Systems' Naval and Area Mission Defense product line, was quoted in the press release as saying, "Our Raytheon-Chemring team will combine a multifunction decoy and missile launcher with world-class missiles and existing ship systems to provide a new mission capability to meet our customers' specific self-defense needs."

Raytheon did not announce a customer or client for the system, which is in the integration engineering phase.